Chelsea Field Quick Links

Chelsea Field and Scott Bakula - A host of stars were snapped as they attended the 3rd Annual CBS Television Studios Rooftop Summer Soiree which was held at the London Hotel in West Hollywood, California, United States - Tuesday 19th May 2015

When Richard Stanley appeared in 1990 with his first film, the cyberpunk splatter flick Hardware, the buzz was hot. While Hardware was surprisingly successful, it wasn't a great film. But it did have a unique style and color that suggested Stanley was only to move onto bigger and better projects. The fall was almost guaranteed.

What happened to Stanley's career (and in particular the sorry fate of his existential sophomore effort, Dust Devil) is a story of almost diabolical circumstance and cold corporate brutality. For a filmmaker like Stanley, starting his career with a genre picture was a fatal misstep but one that couldn't be avoided. Hardware set him up. When U.S. distributors Miramax saw that Stanley had delivered a follow up that was an art film more akin to the work of Alain Resnais than Tobe Hooper, they flipped. Cut from 120 minutes to a trifling 86 minutes, Dust Devil was butchered into incoherence. The British company funding the film went bust and everything went to hell. The cut version (or versions) of Dust Devil were dumped unceremoniously onto a paltry number of screens and quickly relegated to the video graveyard. Richard Stanley limped on, buoyed by a cult fan base, only to see his dream project descend into the creative nightmare that was 1996's The Island of Doctor Moreau.

Every young actress has one. That ill-advised thriller made when they were too young and inexperienced to get decent work and/or to know what they were doing. Wicked is fortunately a tad better than your usual run-of-the-mill thriller, not much better, but a tad better, thanks largely to a young Julia Stiles who plays the title adjective believably well.

The typical teen angst victim, Ellie (Stiles) threatens to run off to L.A., hates her mother, wants her dad to herself, and longs for, well, who knows what, but she'll do just about anything to get all this stuff. When mom is bludgeoned to death, little Ellie couldn't be a suspect...